Trends beyond black vote in play on Prop. 8

Published 4:00 am, Sunday, November 16, 2008

Voters, including David Adams (third from right) who brought his dog, Mackie, with him, wait in a long line outside the Golden Gate Church at Franklin and Clay Streets in San Francisco.

Voters, including David Adams (third from right) who brought his dog, Mackie, with him, wait in a long line outside the Golden Gate Church at Franklin and Clay Streets in San Francisco.

Photo: Laura Morton, Special To The Chronicle

Trends beyond black vote in play on Prop. 8

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Since the election, there's been a tremendous focus on the fact that 70 percent of African Americans voted to ban same-sex marriages in California.

The vote coincided with the overwhelming support among African Americans for a black presidential candidate, Sen. Barack Obama. In the aftermath, some Proposition 8 supporters are viewing the black vote as proof that same-sex marriage is a moral rather than a civil rights issue, while some Prop. 8 opponents tout it as evidence of one community's particular homophobia.

But demographers say the focus on one race not only disregards the complexity of African American identity but also overlooks the most powerful predictors affecting views on same-sex marriage: religion, age and ideology, such as party affiliation. Prop. 8's racial fallout raises the question of how the groundbreaking multiracial support of a presidential candidate could coincide with the racial scapegoating now following a failed state ballot campaign.

"It's just a shame to see the sort of coalition that came out behind Obama, and then you come back to California and you see white gays say 'black people cost us the election,' " said David Binder, a white gay San Franciscan and a polling expert who spent the past two years working for the Obama campaign. "It bothers me that people look at the race of the people involved rather than factors that are more explanatory."

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For many black gays and lesbians, the result has been a reminder that even with the stereotype-shattering election of a black president, caricatures of black people continue to flourish.

"African Americans get demonized when it comes to topics of sexuality," said the Rev. D. Mark Wilson, a black, gay, American Baptist minister who grew up in Oakland and worked on the No on 8 campaign.

The focus on the black vote comes as two social movements came to a climax: the election of a black president and the vote on same-sex marriage in the nation's most populous state. Those two events have unleashed social upheaval that people are still grappling with.

"People aren't responding from a rational analysis," said Andrea Shorter, a black lesbian and No on 8 spokeswoman. "They're responding from an emotional place."

Exit polls show that various social forces played out across California on Prop. 8.

The older voters were, the more likely they were to vote for Prop. 8. Highlighting the trend was the fact that 61 percent of those older than 65 voted for it, while 61 percent of those younger than 30 voted against it.

Ideology also had a pronounced effect, particularly party affiliation. Eighty-two percent of Republicans supported Prop. 8. Only 36 percent of Democrats supported the measure.

Singling out one group

Religion was just as pronounced. Prop. 8 found support among 81 percent of white evangelicals, 65 percent of white Protestants, 64 percent of Catholics and 84 percent of weekly worshipers. In the exit poll's only nonwhite category involving race and religion, 58 percent of nonwhite religious voters supported the measure.

The size of these groups gave them a substantial impact on the Prop. 8 outcome: White evangelicals comprised 17 percent of the electorate, Catholics comprised 30 percent, and Republicans comprised 29 percent.

But, for many, the focus has been on a smaller but more identifiable group, African Americans, who comprise 6 percent of the state population.

Monica Young is black and straight, and she voted against Prop. 8. She found herself driving on Westwood Boulevard in Los Angeles two days after the election and got caught in the midst of a No on 8 protest that blocked traffic. She said a group of men came up to her window and said, "Tell your people to be careful because it is because of them that we don't have equal rights."

"It was traumatic," said Young, 40. "They don't know how I voted. They don't know anything about me."

It's not just liberals who argue that the black vote singularly led to the passage of Prop. 8.

"It was the black vote that voted down gay marriage," Bill O'Reilly, a conservative, straight, white Fox News pundit, said on air.

Some question how a community that endured its own civil rights struggle, race-based oppression, could impede what another group views as its civil rights struggle, oppression based on sexual orientation.

But several gay and lesbian African Americans note that no other group is held to the same standard. All women aren't expected to support rights for Mexican immigrants. White lesbians aren't automatically expected to support the rights of Muslim detainees at Guantanamo.

When it comes to voting, African Americans are treated with "a presumption of civic obligation" to support other liberal causes, said Shorter, the No on 8 spokeswoman.

Some black scholars refer to the phenomenon as "exceptionalism" - a mistaken belief that because African Americans went through slavery, Jim Crow and other systematic forms of oppression, that they automatically have greater moral understanding on all issues.

"What it doesn't pay attention to is that we're all affected by homophobia, capitalism, classism, racism and sexism of the larger society," said Wilson, the minister who worked on the No on 8 campaign.

Wilson said exceptionalism is also put on other groups.

"I think gays and lesbians of color experience it when they go to the LGBT community and think that they're going to the land of Oz," Wilson said. "They think, 'I'm free,' " only to discover that racism exists in places like the Castro district as well.

It's a big reason many gays and lesbians of color have their own places to hang out in Oakland, Wilson said.

Some Prop. 8 supporters now trumpet the black vote as an endorsement that same-sex marriage is not a civil rights issue, but a moral one.

"It was interesting to me that on the same day at the same polling places, African Americans who voted overwhelmingly for President-elect Obama also voted overwhelmingly for Prop. 8," San Francisco Catholic Archbishop George Niederauer, who is white, said at a gathering of the nation's Catholic bishops last week, according to the Chicago Tribune. "We had been told repeatedly for months that it was a civil rights issue. ... (Instead), they saw it as we had presented it - as traditional marriage."

The importance of faith

A number of black gay and lesbian Christians say the No on 8 campaign underestimated the role of faith in the election. The impact of poor religious outreach was compounded in the African American community, where the church remains the single most powerful organizing force.

Historically black churches, which have a diverse array of denominations, include many with a long tradition of biblical literalism, said Professor Eddie Glaude, who teaches religion and African American studies at Princeton University. Glaude said many black churches in the 1960s believed that the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. was "too radical."

Glaude, who is black, believes that larger society's failure to comprehend forces of religion - such as former Republican vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin's Pentecostalism - perpetuates ignorance. In the case of same-sex marriage, Prop. 8 opponents missed an opportunity for change.

"Failing to engage the black Christian community is a failure to understand that there's an internal argument to be had among all Christians about how we ought to understand same-sex love," Glaude said. By allowing conservative Christians to largely claim the discussion about sexuality, events such as the passage of Prop. 8 ensue. "You need more progressive Christians to speak up," he said.

In the Castro district, a reporter sought out white gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender people for their reactions to the black vote on Prop. 8. Of the 10 interviewed, all said they didn't see race as a factor. They spoke about religion. They said they'd also grown up in churches that had homophobic teachings.

"It's not about race, it's about leadership," said Jay Dwyer, 43, of San Francisco. "You can say the same thing about a black Baptist church as a Mormon church or a Catholic."